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Monday, December 6, 2010

Donkey Kong Country Returns' Hours Played Debut - Gamers Going Ape?

Coffee BeansDonkey Kong Country Returns was released on November 21, 2010, in North America; with a MSRP of $49.99. Donkey Kong Country Returns(DKCR) was developed by Retro Studios, and published by Nintendo.

It took 16 days for Donkey Kong's new game to have game-play data appear on the Nintendo Channel.How many hours have Wii owners reportedly spent helping Donkey Kong get his stolen banana hoard back? Let's take a look!

The debut game-play hours shown are for the United States of America Wii owners, not world-wide.

Approx. Number of Players Reporting Data:Donkey Kong Country Returns has 10,503 Wii owners reporting their play-time data, on its debut through the Nintendo Channel.

Average Hours & Total Game-Play Hours Reported:Donkey Kong Country Returns has 84,999 Total Hours of game-play reported for its debut, with an average play-time of 8 Hours 6 Minutes "Per person" reporting data. The debut average play-time per session for Donkey Kong Country Returns is just over 2 Hours 21 Minutes.
Wii owners have averaged about 5,312 game-play hours each day playing DKCR, over the 16 days reported.

Sale Rank & Advertised Price:Donkey Kong Country Returns' Amazon.com sale rank is #2, and is currently selling for $43.54.
(Sale rank and price captured around 3:00PM EST, on 12-6-10)

Review Score Averages:Donkey Kong Country Returns' review score average is 88.03%, based on 32 "professional" reviews on GameRankings.com.
(Review score averages recorded around 3:00PM EST, on 12-6-10)

Amazon.com shows DKCR with a 4.5 out of 5 Stars rating, basically a 90% average; based on 43 customer reviews.

How many "Stars" would you give it?

Filtered Thoughts:
I haven't purchased or played Donkey Kong Country Returns. It is on my radar though, because of the cooperative mode it offers; and I think it's a game Mrs. CoffeewithGames and I would enjoy together.Donkey Kong Country Returns' 10,503 players reporting game-play data on its debut, is the third highest number for a Nintendo published Wii game this year. I'm actually surprised the number is not slighty higher, considering it is Nintendo's big holiday release title; but perhaps DKCR will see a significant increase in the number of players reporting data after Christmas this year.I definitely don't think the initial number of players reporting data will be a reflection of long-term sales for the game; as the current Amazon.com sale rank is encouraging considering how many other high profile games were released in November.

Also, Nintendo has promoted Donkey Kong Country Returns with at least two commercials so far, and you can see them in the YouTube video below:

Questions:Have any of you already played Donkey Kong Country Returns? If so, what do you think of what you have played of DKCR? If you haven't played Donkey Kong's new game, are you expecting to play it soon?

If anybody is interested in Donkey Kong Country Returns, and you haven't purchased it yet; you can see prices listed on Amazon.com linked below:

10 comments:

I played along with my friend while I was out of state and I think it was a blast. We played all the way through and I swear the level design was absolutely impressive. It's hard to do original things with side-scrollers, but this game definitely accomplishes that originality, perhaps several different times in several different ways.

Everything is also so beautiful and very well animated. The only things about this game I personally found disappointing were the lack of animal buddies. Rambi and Squawks were the only ones that appeared, and Squawks was just a side thing that you buy from Cranky for some reason. Then there was also the lack of other Kongs that were usually staples on the map screen, such as Swanky, Funky, Wrinkly, Candy, etc. They are nowhere to be found. Only Cranky showed up on each map.

Gameplay wise my only fuss is the fact that the bonus areas became very repetitive.

The game is a lot of fun. I actually beat the final boss on the same night I bought the game after playing for 8 hours. The game has its faults, but the overall experience is so amazing I couldn't stop playing. I didn't do any of the unlockable levels as I kept them for when I would play with a friend. We've been slowly going through levels to find everything since then.

A little warning though, the game is pretty hard, especially after a couple of worlds. It also doesn't help that some levels have you die instantly. I know I spent more than 10 balloons on many levels.

@Soren:If I purchased it, it would be so Mrs. CoffeewithGames(my wife) and I could have another game to try and complete together.

We completed New Super Mario Bros. Wii in January of this year, but we haven't really played another game with co-op like that since. Kirby's Epic Yarn and Donkey Kong Country Returns both have co-op, so I'm interested in both...and I saw how Sonic Colors offers some 2-player action as well.

@Jonath:Did you play New Super Mario Bros. Wii by any chance? If so, what would you say the difficulty in DKCR is compared to NSMBW with 2-players?

While the game is very hard, I would say that the co-op is a little more, well, co-op friendly than NSMBW for the simple fact that there's no hit detection between players. That is, Donkey and Diddy can run right past each other without colliding, stepping on, or otherwise knocking each other down bottomless pits. So, in that respect, I would say DKCR is a relatively less difficult 2-player game than Mario, even though the base game is exponentially more difficult. And fun, I'd argue. (Don't know if that makes any sense...)

I just got the game and played through the first three worlds. Its a great game so far, I have a few quibbles but nothing that's a deal breaker. In terms of mutliplayer anonymous is right, there is not hit-detection but I must say that it will still be a great challenge. In Mario Bros part of the fun was competing for items and coins. In DKCR your going to want to work together and both be on your A game. You will die a lot and you lose 2 balloons if you both die.

Yeah, the losing 2 balloons upon dying is the biggest problem with the co-op. However the game makes it pretty much to where lives grow on trees. You can buy a bunch of them from Cranky over and over again for pretty cheap. Even if you haven't run into him on the map yet the game makes it really simple to go back to a past map (since there's no Funky. :( ) and purchase lives from him there, then just go back.

It can get pretty challenging at some points, but it's definitely doable. Whoever's playing Diddy can also hop onto Donkey Kong and let him carry them through if they have issues with a particular section, similar to NSMBW.

@Anonymous from December 10, 2010 @ 12:15AM:Thanks for the info! I have added DKCR to my "Video Games List" for Christmas, and if I end up with it; hopefully my wife and I will end up playing through it and enjoying it like we did NSMBW.

@Brad Jerger(The Butcher):Does each player have separate lives like in NSMBW? Or, do the lives come from the same pool, and are shared by both players?

@Soren:"Whoever's playing Diddy can also hop onto Donkey Kong and let him carry them through if they have issues with a particular section, similar to NSMBW."LOL, the word in NSMBW that we screamed often was, "BUBBLE!!!!"

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